The Triangle Shirtwaist Company in Manhattan produced women’s shirtwaists. The fitted, long-sleeved blouses with high necklines worn by women with their long skirts every day in the early 1900’s.  Most of the company’s workers were teenage girls and young women who had immigrated to America with their families, dreaming of ...

Canning before the long winter was once a part of life for most homemakers in America. My grandmother was one of those homemakers, living with my grandfather and her two little boys on a farm in northwest Indiana.  There, she had a large garden in the side yard, along with ...

We’ve all been victim of someone’s fun at our expense when the calendar turns to April 1st.  Everyone’s a prankster, trying to get the better of someone else, all in good fun. The origins of April Fool’s Day go back several centuries. In 18th century Scotland, April Fool’s Day centered ...

The song If, written by David Gates of the band Bread in 1971, was a number four U.S. Billboard hit of its day. Many remember the beautiful rock ballad playing on transistor radios, through open car windows, and in school gymnasiums hosting  dances. The story goes that Gates wrote the ...

Respect was certainly a part of the learning experience in our elementary school. It began when we entered the building each morning. As our principal waited inside the doors to greet us at the start of each new day, any boy who had forgotten to remove his baseball cap had ...

The lunchbox has been part of attending school since the late 1800’s. That’s when school children first made use of old cookie or tobacco tins saved by their mothers to carry that all-important mid-day meal with them to the classroom. I remember the lunchboxes of my own elementary school days ...

Peter said to Jesus: I will lay down my life for you. Jesus said to Peter: Will you really lay down your life for me? (John 13:38)   When I say that God loves me freely and unconditionally, Ask God and my conscience, if I love God with all my ...

I’ve written before about the little blond-headed boy who would have been my uncle if fate had not intervened on February 19, 1937. That is the day that little Jimmy died in the county hospital after a short illness due to food poisoning. His death affected all who knew him. ...

Household chores were a regular part of childhood in my family, and when done right, a small allowance was our reward. Our house was built for a young bride by her new husband in the 1920’s and still had beautiful wood floors 50 years later when we made it our ...

Little wooden heads of both men and women peered down from the eaves of the Great Hall in King Henry VIII’s Hampton Court Palace.  They were painted in lovely details: red lips, hair of blond or brown, little crowns of leaves adorned some of their heads. They all went by ...